Whatcom family farmers

The future of family farming in Whatcom County is far from certain. Learn what farmers are doing to earn your trust. Important information for all who care about water quality, wildlife and sustainable use of our precious resources.

Farms and birds: a good thing except for what gets left behind​

Farmers keep their cows off the wet, flooded, muddy fields in winter. This protects water quality by preventing manure from running off into streams, ditches, the river and the bay. It helps protect shellfish beds.

But farmers don't keep the hundreds of thousands of wintering snow birds in their barns. The birds are one reason among many why bacteria counts in the wet winter months are high in our streams, river and bay.

​Watch the video.

Bertrand creek flows above normal conditions during dry summer for first time in decades.

Years of hard work by farmers in the Bertrand Watershed District culminated in September with the stream augmentation project. For the first time in decades, this salmon-bearing stream has water flowing at or above normal conditions – even during the driest summer on record when farmers are needing water for irrigation.

Read the Press Release announcing the stream augmentation project.

Watch this video to see this remarkable habitat restoration project at work.

Will this new DNA testing show that dairy cows are the only, or even major, cause of fecal coliform in water? Some claim that Whatcom Family Farmers' pointing out other causes is an effort to draw attention away from dairies which they maintain is the only significant cause of the contamination affecting shellfish beds.

This pilot project, featured in this article in Capital Press on August 6, will not be definitive as it only involves one local stream: Scott Ditch. That stream was chosen because there are some sizeable dairy farms there as well as semi-urban development. Water quality testing of streams flowing through cities, such as Fishtrap through Lynden, show higher levels of bacteria than the same stream running through farm country. Tests at the border show some extremely high counts (49,000 fecal coliform colonies when just 200 are allowed!) coming from just across the border.

This pilot project will likely help identify more precisely just where some of this bacteria is coming from. Hopefully, this small initial step will lead to an expanded effort thanks to funding for a grant from the Washington state legislature.

RE Sources has joined lawyers and other anti-farm activists in calling for hugely expensive regulations that would do little to nothing to protect water, but would force most of our dairy farmers out of business. What they say about farmers and pollution is simply not true. Read the detailed rebuttal of RE Sources attack on our farmers here.

Key provisions in this agreement:- establishment of the Portage Bay Partnership focused on reopening the shellfish beds and addressing all sources of water pollution in the Nooksack basin. This will include working together to secure local, state and federal support for water quality initiatives and conducting a public education campaign aimed at encouraging citizen participation in water quality protection and improvement.

- no adversarial litigation against the parties related to water quality

- development of Water Quality Improvement Plans using agreed upon experts to review existing farm plans and develop any additional measures if needed for each farm participating. The plans will be enforceable in federal court.​- Establishment of a Portage Bay Recovery Fund with an initial contribution of $450,000 by the signers and the dairy industry, with joint effort to raise additional funds from mostly public sources to compensate shellfish harvesters harmed by the closures, and to aid in recovering shellfish beds

In Phase 1 of the agreement, two farms will be identified to develop the first Water Quality Improvement Plans. These plans are to be developed prior to May 1, 2017. Following that, other farms are invited to participate in the agreement.

The Portage Bay Partnership, managed by an initial board of four farmers and four members of the Lummi Indian Business Council, will begin meeting in January and map out plans for actions to be taken by the Partnership in the near term.